Salad Growers In Spin Over E. Coli

Report Shows Government Never Improved Produce Inspections After Deadly 2006 Spinach E. Coli Outbreak

(AP) 
Men in sweat shirts and baseball caps cut heads of lettuce from the ground and loaded them into cardboard boxes to be taken to a nearby plant owned by Castroville-based packager Ocean Mist Farms. From there, they would be shipped out to supermarkets and buyers as far away as Japan.

In an attempt to reassure wary customers, Ocean Mist's vice president recently helped organize a group to police food safety, run entirely by the $1.7 billion leafy greens industry. Some 118 salad processors have signed on to the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement, which uses its own voluntary food safety guidelines.

Public health inspectors can impose mandatory food-safety rules on the farm only after an outbreak, said Patrick Kennelly, chief of the food safety section at California's Department of Public Health.

Some scientists question the approach.

"Mandatory measures give a level playing field and make sure everybody responds," said Martin Cole, a food safety expert at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

But in the absence of federal regulations, 10 auditors from the California Department of Food and Agriculture are monitoring the fields, including Roxann Bramlage, who tramped down the rows of lettuce with a checklist.

"When somebody cuts their finger and it bleeds, what will you do?" Bramlage asked foreman Fernando Vasquez, standing next to a harvester machine rolling gently over the beds.

"When he cuts his finger, even if it's a small cut, I take him to the edge of the field," Vasquez said in Spanish. "Then I put a border around the area where he was working and I don't let anyone cut in it."

That was the right answer.

Ocean Mist passed Bramlage's field audit because the company could prove its growers protected their crops against pathogens, which gave them the right to use a state seal telling consumers the product was grown safely. Growers say that seal sends a powerful message to consumers.

"Once they join, there's nothing voluntary about the program," said Scott Horsfall, who oversees the marketing agreement. "If a handler is decertified, buyers will definitely react."

The industry-led approach isn't foolproof, however.

On Aug. 29, Metz Fresh, a grower and shipper in King City, 30 miles south of Salinas, recalled 8,000 cartons of fresh spinach tainted with salmonella. Auditors had visited the company a few weeks before, but inspected a field where the produce was clean. So they noted nothing unusual in their report.

No one knows how the bacteria got into the leaves. But the news rekindled fears among consumers and legislators who say they are skeptical of the government's willingness to let the industry police itself.

"Some will say the system is working and that we are catching the problem and recalling products, but the average consumer wouldn't know that," said U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. "Last year, it was E. coli; this year, salmonella."

Harkin and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., are both working on bills to develop a set of mandatory national guidelines to supercede the current patchwork of food safety regulations.

Similar proposals were developed a year ago, but none have gone forward.

In March, the Bush Administration issued a draft of its guidance to minimize microbial hazards of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables. Unlike the strict hazard-control program governing meat and poultry, the guidance included no new laws.

Many growers and producers are either unaware of the guidelines or simply aren't complying, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group.

"Inspection alone isn't going to fix the problem, unless the farmers utilize food-safety plans that are effective for controlling pathogens," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of the center's food safety division. "They're not getting at the source of the contamination: on the farm."

[slim1h2o]

This Gov''t is so inept, it''s almost unbelievable!
Are they trying to kill us or what?

[prairiefox1]

TYPICAL OF THE GOVERNMENT! LOTS OF WORDS, LITTLE RESPONSE AND COLLECT MORE MONEY!
MAYBE THEY LIKE E-COLI! I ALWAYS PICTURE THEM EATING IT!